Future Students:

1999

FLORENCE---Harriet Keyserling, author and a former South Carolina legislator from Beaufort, will speak at Francis Marion University Monday, Oct. 18, at 6 p.m. in Cauthen Educational Media Center Auditorium.

Free to the public, the lecture is sponsored by FMU and the League of Women Voters.

Keyserling’s book “Against the Tide: One Woman’s Political Struggle,” available in FMU’s Bookstore, traces her journey into the world of “good ol’ boy” Southern politics and her labors to reform the political system in South Carolina. It is the story of a woman who arrived a Yankee liberal and became an effective eight-term legislator in the South Carolina House of Representatives.

A native New Yorker, she graduated from Barnard College with honors in economics and mathematics. She came to South Carolina in 1944 with her husband, a native son and local physician. She was a liberal northerner in the conservative South and a Jew in a predominantly Christian world.

After raising four children, she became involved in state and local politics. Driven by passion for the causes she supports, Keyserling organized a chapter of the League of Women Voters, became the first woman to serve on the Beaufort County Council, and at the age of 54, was elected to the General Assembly. She served for 16 years, then retired in 1992.

The book has received rave reviews from publications such as The Washington Post, The Jerusalem Post and The State and from well-known personalities such as Pat Conroy, David Broder and Nancy Kassebaum Baker.

Keyserling also will speak at the First Monday Breakfast Club meeting at Horne’s Restaurant in Florence Oct. 19 at 7:15 a.m. and later at the Governor’s School for Science and Mathematics and Coker College in Hartsville. Her book will be available for purchase at each event.

For more information, call Lucy Thrower of the FMU mathematics faculty at 843-661-1574.